Feminism and Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice

12 Building Connections between Antiracism and Feminism: Antiracist Women and Profeminist Men

Chapter 12 Building Connections between Antiracism and Feminism Antiracist Women and Profeminist Men Eileen O’Brien and Michael P. Armato To overturn the vast inequalities that characterize U.S. society, members of the “dominant” groups, including white American men and women, will have to actively engage in the fight for racial and gender justice.Such actions are not unprecedented in U.S. history. Some men voiced support for women’s equality as far back as the late 1800s1 and in the 1970s radical and socialist feminist men’s groups emerged in response to the U.S. women’s movement.2 Moreover, white abolitionists voiced their opposition to the enslavement of black Americans in the nineteenth century.3 In the early twentieth century when the political and social rights of formerly enslaved blacks were denied, white Americans helped to establish, and financially sponsored, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an interracial organization, which has been the leading organization combating racial discrimination in the United States. Whites also played a central role in the black civil rights movement, particularly in freedom schools, civil disobedience, and voter registration drives.4 Continuing this tradition of what we call “dominant group activism” today are white antiracist and male profeminist activists in North America who see their involvement as necessary to the struggle for social justice. In recent decades, numerous “men’s movements” have appeared throughout the United States,typically as small local grassroots organizations.Although some, like The Promise Keepers and certain strands of Robert Bly’s Mythopoetic Men’s Movement, are antifeminist, others such as Men’s Rape Prevention Project, Men Stopping Violence, Men as Peacemakers, Men Stopping Rape,RAVEN,and many others support feminist goals.Moreover, 277 whites are active in antiracist groups such as Antiracist Action, founded in the 1990s, with over one hundred North American chapters and an estimated two thousand core members, and the People’s Institute which has trained thousands in its “Undoing Racism” workshops since 1980.5 In this essay, we analyze the similarities and differences in the way white antiracists and male profeminists practice activism, concluding with a consideration of the potential for coalition building across these groups. The data are from Eileen O’Brien’s study of white antiracists and Michael Armato’s study of male profeminists. The antiracist participants came primarily from two organizations: Antiracist Action (ARA) and the People’s Institute (PI) for Survival and Beyond. Eileen O’Brien used participant-observation methods, including “tabling ” (providing information about the group and recruiting members at a concert) and protesting at a Ku Klux Klan rally with ARA, and participating in a two-and-a-half-day Undoing Racism workshop offered by PI. She interviewed twenty-four white antiracists (thirteen women and eleven men) from one Canadian city and a variety of regions in the United States. Nine were under the age of thirty, but the majority were thirty to sixty years old; one was over eighty. Michael Armato’s study included interviews with ten profeminist activists . Seven were affiliated with four profeminist organizations from the East, Southeast, and Midwest of the United States: Men Can Stop Rape (formerly known as Men’s Rape Prevention Project) in Washington, D.C., Men Stopping Violence (MSV) in Atlanta, Georgia, Men Stopping Rape (MSR) in Madison, Wisconsin, and Men as Peacemakers (MP) in Duluth, Minnesota. Three were not associated with any organization but actively worked for feminist causes, two as abortion clinic escorts in Florida and one as a feminist campus activist in the state of Washington. The men’s ages ranged from twenty-five to fifty, with a relatively equal distribution of men in their twenties, thirties, and forties. Armato also participated in a MRPP weekend training workshop in July 1999. Additionally, both authors analyzed the literature of these groups, including pamphlets, newsletters , and web sites. Organizational Frames of Activism Collective action “frames” have been popular in recent work on social movements.6 Originally proposed by Snow and Benford, framing refers 278 e i l e e n o ’ b r i e n a n d m i c h a e l p. a r m at o to the way movement actors develop shared understandings of what their goals are and how to achieve them.7 The concept is an attempt to incorporate interpretive sociology into social movement theory, a response to its previously highly structural focus.8 Framing...